"The mountains and rivers are quiet, and the years are silent." This may be the most simple wish of many people today, but the change of the situation has not given us more hope, especially for Xu Jiayin. On the afternoon of May 18, Sina Finance announced that Evergrande would postpone the pre-sale of electric vehicles indefinitely. For the news, Hu olfactory asked Evergrande for confirmation, and the other party said that there was no response at present The public relations department of hengchi automobile did not reply whether hengchi 5, which had previously announced that it would be mass produced in June, could carry out pre-sale on May 20 as scheduled, as previously disclosed
According to the previous news, Xu Jiayin, chairman of the board of directors of Evergrande group, once put forward a request at the internal meeting on March 22: "work hard for three months, and mass produce hengchi 5 on June 22, so as to lay a solid foundation for the healthy and sustainable development of Evergrande automobile." However, less than two months later, it was reported that the new car, which had already been exhibited in the store, would postpone the pre-sale indefinitely, which must be said to be a pity.
In fact, around the pre-sale of hengchi 5, the company has launched intensive market activities since May. On the "international family day" on May 15, hengchi announced on its official microblog @ hengchi that it would hold the activity of "punch in and enjoy the car at the exhibition and experience centers in Tianjin and Guangzhou". At the same time, hengchi has held hengchi 5 static experience activities with owners as the target group in Hengda Real Estate in Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu, Haikou and Shaoxing.
At present, hengchi 5 has successively arrived at its stores in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin and other places, and some auto media have taken static pictures of the vehicles under the guidance of suspected Hengda cars. Earlier, on April 21, surrounded by a large number of executives and employees, Xu Jiayin statically experienced the modeling, interior decoration and intelligent cockpit of the new car In subsequent comments, he said the car was "beautiful, really beautiful."
However, the development path of hengchi 5 and Hengda automobile is bumpy. On August 10, 2021, Evergrande automobile announced in the Hong Kong stock exchange that the company was contacting several potential independent third-party investors to discuss the sale of some of the company's assets. On October 13, latepost revealed that the production line reconstruction project of Evergrande automobile Tianjin plant had stalled due to the arrears of equipment suppliers. However, in the same period, the company still held a partner conference in Tianjin. Liu yongzhuo, its president, proposed at the meeting that "after three months of hard work, the first car of hengchi in Tianjin factory will go offline".
However, this "three months of hard work" is obviously more reliable than that of Xu Jiayin On December 30, Hengda official announced that hengchi 5 was officially offline in Tianjin factory. However, this car is only hung with the nameplate of "on-line commissioning" and is not a mass-produced car delivered to users. It is speculated that this car is only used as a Pt car for production verification, and there is still a long process from the real delivery of the user's commodity car.
For Evergrande group, the automobile business plays an important role. Xu Jiayin once said in October 2021, "realize the transformation from real estate industry to new energy vehicle industry within 10 years." In fact, Evergrande group's "throwing money" behavior in the automotive field once triggered a heated debate in the industry.
Evergrande's interest in car building dates back to 2018. On June 25, Evergrande acquired 100% shares of Hong Kong Shiying company for HK $6.747 billion, thus obtaining 45% shares of smart king company and becoming the largest shareholder of FF. At that time, Xu Jiayin and Jia Yueting once came very close, but in the end, there was a dispute over the dominance of FF. On October 8 of that year, FF claimed that Evergrande failed to pay the investment money on time and initiated arbitration against the latter. Subsequently, Xu Jiayin and Evergrande were forced out.
In March 2019, Evergrande Group acquired 70% of the shares of Tate electromechanical Co., Ltd. at the price of 500 million yuan, which holds all the equity of e-traction in the Netherlands. This foreign company has the world's leading hub motor technology. However, in November 2021, Evergrande group, which was in a liquidity crisis, sold the company to saietta group, a British motor manufacturer, at a price of 2 million euros (about 14.5204 million yuan).
In June 2020, Evergrande also completed the wholly-owned holding of NEVs (Guoneng electric vehicle Sweden Co., Ltd.) at the price of USD 379.5 million. According to the plan at that time, the latter will provide R & D support for hengchi 1. However, when Evergrande was in trouble, it chose to sell the Swedish company of Guoneng automobile. After the original acquisition of Evergrande, the Swedish part of Guoneng automobile was transformed into a design and consulting company. However, the sale does not affect the production qualification of Guoneng automobile Tianjin factory. You know, Evergrande was not enthusiastic about Guoneng's factory in Tianjin at first. In fact, some media quoted insiders as saying that "compared with Tianjin, Evergrande's investment in Shanghai and Guangzhou bases is much larger, and the cost of adopting more advanced factory equipment and technology is not cheap".
However, the Tianjin plant of Guoneng automobile obtained the car manufacturing qualification in 2017, which moved Evergrande automobile, which is anxious to realize the mass production of new cars. Finally, hengchi 5 made the announcement of the Ministry of industry and information technology on the qualification of using national energy in Tianjin factory, and finally realized mass production here.
Although the rumor of "hengchi 5 indefinitely postpones pre-sale" has not been finally confirmed, the author speculates that the emergence of this kind of storm is directly related to the shutdown and logistics shutdown of the current automobile supply chain industry. Take China and even the global auto supply chain giant Bosch as an example. At its press conference on May 16, it revealed that the current overall production capacity of each business segment of Bosch China is between 30-75%. As some of the company's tier 2 and even Tier 3 small suppliers did not resume production, some of their businesses could not resume production.
In fact, subject to the overall R & D Progress of Evergrande automobile and the changes of suppliers, hengchi 5 has made some adjustments in product parameters. At the Shanghai auto show in 2021, Evergrande Motor announced that hengchi 5 will have a comprehensive pure electric endurance of more than 700 kilometers. However, in the catalogue of vehicle product information of the Ministry of industry and information technology on March 13 this year, even under the CLTC working condition of the most "virtual standard", the range of this car is only 602km, which can be called a serious shrinkage.
However, even if the product parameters have shrunk, Evergrande has stumbled in front of the final pre-sale and delivery. Despite another disaster, we sincerely hope that Xu Jiayin and Evergrande can continue to build cars, even if they take one more step. After all, China's auto industry doesn't need another piece of bad news.